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Iwamura: Altared States 291multilayered belief and practices, and (4) transformed selves (A Generationof Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation [SanFrancisco: Harper, 1993], see esp. pp. 241–262). See also Roof, SpiritualMarketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (NewHaven: Princeton, 1999). For a discussion of GenX spirituality, whichshares notable features with its Boomer forerunner, see Tom Beaudoin,Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 1998).18. Ken Tanaka, Parents Sharing the Nembutsu Teachings with Their YoungChildren (San Francisco: Buddhist Churches of America, 1995), p. 20.19. The ambivalence toward the ancestor dimension of the butsudn canperhaps be traced to a number of interlinking influences and causes: (1)competing worldviews (Shinto versus Jødo Shin Buddhism), (2) the viewof death and the deceased in U.S. society, (3) the dominant understandingof “religion” that embraces a “world religions” framework and viewssyncretic practices that err from this framework as “less pure.” Anotherreason is linked to the language that is available to talk about this religiousphenomenon. In his discussion of terminology, Jonathan Huoi Xung Leewrites: “I have preferred to use the term ‘veneration’ and not ‘worship’ inmy discussion of ‘ancestral veneration.’ I consciously did this because‘worship’ connotes a Christian-centric bias, as well as a tone of judgment.‘Veneration’ is a better, more respectful way of illustrating the rituals andbeliefs in ancestral veneration. It is a sign of love and commitment on thepart of living to remember and care for the spirits of the dead” (“AncestralVeneration in Vietnamese Spiritualities,” Review of Vietnamese Studies 3-1 [2003]: p. 14).20. See Jane Naomi Iwamura, “Homage to Ancestors: Exploring the Horizonsof Asian American Religious Identity,” Amerasia Journal 22-1 (1996):pp. 162–167.